Mark McIntyre's been interested in local politics since arriving in the late 1970s at the University of Colorado, where he was the community relations commissioner for the student government.

Now, having built a 30-year small business and raised a family here, he feels it's "time to serve my community."

"I want to offer leadership to guide us into a better future for Boulder," McIntyre said. "I think Boulder is changing, the world is changing, and I think we can either embrace that change or fight against it."

He sees that many in the city are distressed by the pace of development, by crowding on popular trails and by increasing congestion.

"I think some people have a vision of Boulder that it was at its peak when they arrived," McIntyre said. "Well, I've witnessed Boulder do a lot of good things over the last 40 years, and I want to see us continue being innovative."

In his view, that means an approach that sees the city evolving its policies on a number of key issues.

"We have to start accommodating different forms of housing that are denser, are a little smaller, are more affordable, and we have to start changing our code to allow for that," McIntyre said, when asked how he'd combat the city's housing affordability crisis.

Family: Wife Jill, daughter, son-in-law, two grandchildren, son and fiancé, mother and in-laws

How long in Boulder: 40 years

Neighborhood: Melody-Catalpa

Professional background: Partner for 30 years at Marketing Technologies (engineering sales for U.S. manufacturers)

Political/community experience: Active volunteer in Boulder community for 40 years with schools, various boards, and panels involving arts, Open Space and cycling issues; supporter and campaign worker for progressive issues and candidates

He's said he wants to see Boulder become the Amsterdam of the United States, with expanded bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and more mixed-use developments that put retail on the first floor and housing on top of it. He wants "bold" public art and welcomes the controversy such work can bring. And his vision for how people should get around the city is: "Drive if you must, ride if you can, but let's all try to get along."

McIntyre, who pledged to bike to every campaign meeting and event, said Boulder should be doing more to promote development that's oriented around the vision for transit that he and others share.

He cited a scuttled housing proposal that would have been built near the corner of Iris Avenue and Broadway, and that, despite carrying relatively few planned units, drew wide interest in the community for what it represented within broader land-use debates.

"It's not that that development proposal was perfect, but if you can't put a modestly dense development on Broadway, on a bus line, at a bus stop, where can you put one?" McIntyre said. "We have to be able to say yes to something."

He believes north Broadway can be a "second downtown," provided the planning to support such a vision.

McIntyre supported Boulder's municipalization effort during the 2011 and 2013 elections. Until recently, he was undecided on whether he would support the proposed tax extension that would see Boulder continue its effort to form a municipal electric utility separate from Xcel Energy.

But now, he said, the city should attempt to reach its various climate-related goals, including one that calls for 100 percent renewable electricity citywide by 2030, by partnering with Xcel. He reached this decision "reluctantly."

"Our battles with Xcel have proven to be more costly, more time consuming than any of us would have hoped for," he said.

Much of McIntyre's public exposure in the local political realm has been tied to his advocacy around mountain biking, which of late he's done as part of Open Boulder, the citizen group that lobbied for the controversial North Sky Trail on the west side of U.S. 36 toward Lyons.

He's actually "not a big mountain biker," he said, despite the public persona. But McIntyre is deeply interested in outdoor recreation and Boulder's open space program. He believes the city should stop trying to acquire new properties unless those properties connect to existing ones.

He rejects the suggestion that Boulder's open space network is overused, and said that it's instead poorly maintained.

"We have far too big a backlog of deferred maintenance," he said.

McIntyre supports the city's new long-term homelessness strategy, which calls for "coordinated entry" designed to personalize assistance for individual clients. But he's concerned that the city's urban camping ban will remain "untenable."

"We have a camping ban, where we either jail people and give them a very expensive night, or we turn our eye and don't enforce our camping ban," he said. "I think we need to evaluate other solutions, and possible (designated) camps — seasonal or year-round — need to be evaluated."

Though he's hoping to be elected in November, he realizes there are many who could never afford to act on the impulse to run for office, since City Council members make about $11,000 a year for their service and must dedicate the equivalent of a part-time job, or more, on a weekly basis, on top of whatever else they may do for a living.

"I also am a big fan of paying more for the service of our council members," he said. "We'll never have a youthful wage-earner on council until we do, or until we reduce the number of hours required and the expectations."

But if he is voted into a seat, he looks forward to pushing the city to be "bold again."

"If I think about Boulder in some golden, distant era," McIntyre said, "I think about us being bold in our leadership and setting large directions and having our council know when to stay out of the weeds and provide good leadership."

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